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B.C. woman ordered to repay ex-fiancé over $5,000 for missing engagement ring
A B.C. woman who offered contradictory statements to a civil resolution tribunal on the whereabouts of an engagement ring has been ordered to compensate her former fiancée over $5,000 for the missing jewelry.
According to a decision posted last week, Megan Klenman was in a long-term relationship with Krystol Bullock in March 2020 and decided to propose with a ring valued at $4,859.68.
Things soured between the two by that August, leading Klenman to “step back,” tribunal vice chair Kandis McCall wrote. They remained engaged, however, and both parties agreed that Bullock would keep the ring for the time being.
Their relationship ended for good two years later, and a series of text messages presented by Klenman as evidence shows repeated requests for the ring’s return and several responses from Bullock promising to do so.
As noted by McCall, provincial laws dictate “that if an engagement ends before marriage, the engagement ring is to be returned to the party who purchased it,” and since the two didn’t cohabitate during the relationship, the division of property under the Family Law Act does not apply.
In one text exchange, Klenman asked that it be sent via courier service, but Bullock declined, saying “she did not want to take the chance that it might not end up” being returned.
Three weeks later, Bullock sent Klenman a message “saying she needed to be at peace with the end of their relationship before returning the ring,” only to send another message that same day saying she no longer had the ring but that Klenman was “welcome to go through the boxes in her garage to find it.”
She claimed not to have it in another message two weeks later.
Bullock argued that the messages, while accurate, were “taken out of context” because Klenman had blocked her across “communication platforms,” making it impossible to obtain the full exchange.
But McCall said Bullock failed to tell the tribunal “what the context would show, describe the allegedly missing messages, or explain how they would prove that she gave the ring back.”
Bullock submitted that her messages about returning the ring were meant “to avoid conflict,” not an admission that she still had it in her possession.
She also claimed that Klenman had already taken back the ring and its box during a 2020 argument when she left the room. She included a written statement from her daughter to support the claim, alleging that Klenman vowed to take the ring back if Bullock was not going to wear it. It was given little weight by McCall, noting that Bullock’s daughter was not in the room and could not have seen Klenman take it.
McCall said Bullock’s memory “contradicts her later messages” in which she tells Klenman she has the ring and would return it when she finds peace.
“Bullock’s reason for not returning the ring shifted over time from ‘I will give you the ring when I’m ready’ to ‘I do not have the ring,” McCall wrote, noting that Bullock never once reminded Klenman in the text exchanges presented that it had already been reclaimed.
McCall also rejected the notion that Bullock was trying to dodge a confrontation with Klenman.
“It makes no sense that she would change her reason for not returning the ring and invite (Klenman) to her home to look for it if she did not have it in her possession, particularly if she was trying to avoid conflict.”
And since Bullock insisted she does not currently have the ring to return, McCall ordered her to instead reimburse Klenman the full cost plus tribunal-related fees for a total of $5,055.80.
Bullock argued the ring is no longer worth what was paid in 2020, but McCall said she “provided no evidence showing what the current value would be or why it would depreciate.”
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